Those were likely the last words spoken by 60-year-old Juanita Wheat before she was struck in the street in front of her house on Halloween night, according to an officer’s testimony during a preliminary hearing Thursday for Celestine Perryman, who is charged with vehicular homicide.

Officer David Draime told District Court Judge George Hardesty that Wheat died of severe injuries a short time later at a local hospital, and Perryman was the driver of the SUV that hit her and carried her 90 feet on its hood after impact.

“She was trying to make her way across the street to get some Halloween candy,” Draime said.

Perryman was intoxicated at the time, he said, and a portable Breathalyzer test showed she had a blood alcohol level of .10, which is over the legal limit of .08. She also failed three field sobriety tests, he said.

Draime said Perryman told him she’d had “a couple of drinks” before going out that night.

Witnesses at the home Wheat was trying to reach told investigators that said the SUV first slowed, then accelerated to a “high rate of speed” as it neared the point of impact, Draime said.

Wheat was crossing dimly lit Summerville Street with the aid of her walker just before 8 p.m. when she was struck, he said.

View full sizeJuanita Wheat, top left, poses with her children in this undated photo. (Courtesy of the Wheat family)

When interviewed at the scene, Draime said Perryman told him she had four other passengers in the vehicle when she hit Wheat, but they fled after the accident. She traveled about two blocks and then turned around, not knowing what she hit, he said.

Hardesty found there was sufficient evidence to bind Perryman’s case over to the grand jury. Perryman is currently out on a $15,000 bond.

The victim’s daughter and a family friend were in attendance on Thursday, and were visibly upset with the testimony.

Interviewed shortly after Wheat’s death, family members described the great-grandmother as a mixture of loving and fussy, tough and giving, as well as stubborn. Her eldest daughter, Lynette White, said she protested her mother’s trip to the neighbors for Halloween candy, only to have her go anyway.

White also described her mother as extremely selfless.

“"She was a beautiful person,” White told the Press-Register/AL.com. “ If she can help you, she will.”